January 2009

January 29, 2009

by Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV showThe Fixer

(Please note: all names have been changed in the interests of protecting the privacy of the people we've met with on this journey.)

The morning last February dawned bright and cold. Jaime and I suited up and prepared to enter a meeting with a woman who could easily hand us a check for $20 million and never bat an eyelash. Our hopes, to say the least, were huge.

Rose was a widow and her husband had started one of the largest private companies n the US, employing tens of thousands of people. Their business was in recycling metal and a variety of related businesses. When Rose's husband died, control of the company passed to her. We’d never heard of them until Jaime had pulled up Rose’s information and succeeded in getting us in for a meeting.

We brought several copies of the prospectus with us to go over. In addition, our graphic design genius Ari had put together a few great posters that she’d mocked up despite being horribly sick. Since we didn’t yet have our leading man, the person in the poster was deliberately in shadow. However, we felt that having a visual aid would help this woman visualize what THE FIXER would eventually look like.

Jaime and I drove into the financial district of Boston for the meeting and arrived five minutes early. Upstairs in the non-descript, but elegant office, we were shown into a conference room. We immediately noticed that there were six chairs set out. We had anticipated pitching only to the woman in question. It turned out we had a larger audience.

The first person who breezed into the room was Bob and he introduced himself with a hearty handshake and smile. “I hope you don’t mind me sitting in on this. Rose asked me to look over your materials and I’ve got a few questions.”

Far be it for us to say no, right? Rose then entered the meeting and was gracious and warm in her greeting. Her first words to us were, “Well, you’re not what I expected.”

Apparently, when she heard that a couple of guys from Boston wanted to make a vampire show, the first image that popped into her head was that we would be dressed in Gothic fashion with tattoos and piercings. Instead, she got two suited business professionals. Score one for us.

Behind Rose came her two twenty-something sons, who, according to Bob, “Don’t get a chance to do something like this everyday, so we invited them to sit in on this, too.” The guys were both nice enough and only looked vaguely disinterested.

We all took our seats and Bob brought out a copy of our prospectus that Rose had provided him. All over this document was bright red ink and scrawled questions. Bob smiled. “I’ve been looking over your presentation and I’ve got just a few questions for you…”

For the next sixty minutes, Bob fired salvo after salvo at me. Jaime sat quietly by and it seemed that Bob was focused solely on me. Perhaps because they were my novels we were talking about turning into a TV series. But for sixty minutes there was no let up in his assault. This was a man who knew exactly what questions to ask of any business in order to make a judgment call about investing. It was impressive, to say the least.

Bob had questions on every conceivable aspect of our proposal. He went through the sales figures, budgets, casting, crew, book sales, and pretty much every possible thing he could. I answered his questions evenly and without pause. And for the most part, he seemed satisfied with the responses. Yes, obviously this was new territory. No, no one has tried this before. Yes, there is risk. But there’s also great reward.

And so it went. At the end o sixty minutes, Bob paused and said (thankfully), “Well, that’s all I’ve got.” He then looked around the table, first at Rose and then her sons. After Bob’s barrage, the other questions were a joy to field.

Bob’s role in Rose’s company was of Chief Executive, so it’s no wonder that he really took us through the wringer. We’d never expected an easy sale and $20 million is one hell of a lot of money. But Bob was also fair and I respected him immensely for his candor. Where he didn’t know about the industry, he readily admitted so. And our presentation became as much a tutorial on the entertainment industry as it did our addressing his concerns.

The biggest hurdle, it appeared, was the fact that they, like other wealthy Bostonians, simply didn’t make any money in the entertainment field. Convincing them that they could was our biggest challenge.

Finally, Rose stood and said, “Well, I’m really looking to do something different. And this certainly is different.” We took that as a great sign. I’d brought copies of my novels and handed them around from my dwindling supply. Rose took copies of each and told us she was going to read them and let us know what she thought.

We all shook hands and thanked them for having us come in and that was that. Outside, Jaime and I walked back to the car and sat there catching our breath. I had a pounding headache and felt like I’d just run a marathon. I’d been in pitch meetings before with film and TV types, but those were an absolute dream compared to what we’d just endured. Bob had never been rude or insulting, he’d just been persistent with his line of questioning.

Now we had to do the most uncomfortable thing of all: wait.

(Note: Enjoying reading about our experiences turning THE FIXER into reality? Want to get involved? We still have room for a few investors if you’re interested or know someone who might be. Drop us a line at jonfmerz@verizon.net)

The Latin epic poem was a story of contrasts. Of particular interest to me was the pietas of Aeneas and the furor of Dido. Some words don't exactly translate well into English. So at the time, this young coed interpreted this respectively as mindless duty and frenzied passion. Not quite, Dr. Snowden said. I'm thinking whatever, magister. So, he told the story of another one of his female students who said, if she were Dido, she would have killed Aeneas dead! He worked himself into hysterics laughing ... and told this same story every semester, by the way. I didn't get it. Never got it in fact. The chick was burning on a funeral pyre for crying out loud; I just hoped I never had that much passion.

I hoped I never had much passion ... and here I am -- coping and managing the passion that burns inside of me still ... nearly 30 years later. I thought I hid from it and was doing a pretty good job managing it and applying it until Inauguration Day. Here's what President Obama had to say:

This is the source of our confidence -- the knowledge that God calls on us to shape an uncertain destiny.

This made me think of Dido, CIO of ... er, I mean, Queen of Carthage again. It seemed certain to me as a young student that the destiny of Homer's wretched characters would be tragic. But what if they had the confidence to shape an uncertain destiny? What if Dido, Queen of Carthage, was confident that she had the power to shape a different destiny with the sense of purpose personified by a love of a lifetime? What if Aeneas, the courageous Trojan warrior, bound by the duty of a preordained destiny and offspring of the goddess of love, was confident that he had the power to shape a different destiny?

The answer, I believe, is that the tragic lovers COULD have shaped a different destiny. But, then again, these are fictionalized characters. Any resemblance to real people today is only coincidental, right? Or is it?

Aeneas, the Trojan warrior, had a duty to rebuild an ill-fated Troy which caused him to leave a love that he would spend many lifetimes trying to find again. Dido, Queen of Carthage, poorly invested her passion causing her to abandon the mighty city that she loved and built. But these fictional characters had the power all along to shape a different destiny -- passion, power, and purpose. They just lacked the confidence and the knowledge that they could shape that different destiny.

I was inspired by the words of President Obama in his historic charge on Inauguration Day 2009. I heard him and was reminded of my gift. My ability to predict or change my destiny and my future. And with this gift, I am required to live and lead with the certainty that I can shape or reshape a very uncertain future. My fingers shake across this keyboard as I realize the gravity of what is expected and required of me. After all, to whom much is given, much is expected. And though the cost of using this gift is high, the cost of NOT using this gift is even higher.

January 22, 2009

(When last we left, Jon & Jaime, partners at New Ronin Productions, had just decided to produce their own television series THE FIXER based on Jon's Lawson Vampire novels. But they needed money to do that - a lot of money...)

Based on our budget for producing thirteen one-hour episodes, plus an additional 14th episode that would be released only on the DVD set, and the purchase of a small facility for a sound stage, green screen, and post-production, we estimated that we would need $20 million to fund THE FIXER. That’s a lot of money, but far less than what networks routinely spend.

Jon F. Merz

Once you start delving into Hollywood, you find out that networks usually spend up to $4 million on a pilot episode alone. Additional episodes range anywhere from high six-figures to $2-$3 million. Then there are the amortization costs that networks and production companies add on that further drive up the cost.

But we were most definitely not Hollywood.

And we had assembled a team of people who knew how to get things done without a bloated bottom line. Further, the people who had come on-board the team were more interested in being a part of something big rather than simply cashing a paycheck.

Keeping that budget in mind, we set about doing sales forecasts of what we could reasonably expect to make on broadcast rights sales domestically, internationally, and through DVD sales, and digital downloads.

We knew that a $20 million investment would require a $30 million payback ($20 million + 50% ROI for our investors) plus whatever we hoped to make as profit. And our hopes were that we would make enough beyond what we owed to set up a second season of THE FIXER and possibly start some other projects as well.

Our worst-case sales projections came in at $35 million (cumulative from all sales channels) and our best sales projections were well over $100 million.

Emboldened by these numbers, we didn’t necessarily feel that seeking $20 million was too far-fetched. It would still require a deft touch to even get in the front door with potential investors, however.

My partner Jaime has just that touch. He’s a gifted speaker and is empathic and driven about what he believes in. And whereas I loathe the prospect of cold calling anyone, Jaime has no qualms about picking up the phone and talking to absolutely anyone about what we are doing.

Jaime did some research on New England’s wealthiest people and started calling them up. Just like that. Inevitably, he would get a personal assistant on the line or someone in charge of filtering out potential nut jobs. But Jaime very seldom ran into anyone who wasn’t interested in hearing about THE FIXER.

We soon had a prospect. While I won’t disclose any names of the people we dealt with out of respect for their privacy, all of our initial pitches were to billionaires in our area.

Billionaire #1’s personal assistant just happened to be a vampire fan. That’s always a good thing. And when she heard about THE FIXER, she couldn’t wait to tell her boss about us. And she did just that. We sent over our confidential prospectus and waited. After several weeks, Jaime spoke to her. She told Jaime that her boss was interested, but wanted to run it past his son, who apparently worked out in Hollywood at his own production company.

We said fine and waited some more. Jaime called again and was told that the son thought the idea was spectacular. Great, we thought, this is it. A home run the first time out. When do we sign?

But this particular billionaire thought that rather than get involved himself, that THE FIXER would be a perfect vehicle for his son’s production company – would we be open to that?

Of course we would!

And that, of course, is where everything fell apart. Because, unbeknownst to us, we had wandered into the middle of a father/son feud. After doing some research on the son’s production company and discovering that neither of his two projects to date had made any money, we wondered about the nature of the company. Jaime called to speak with the assistant again and was told that as soon as her boss suggested to his son that he work with us, all hell broke loose. The son didn’t like his father telling him what he should do and who he should work with and stormed out of the house to fly back to Los Angeles in a big huff.

Oooookay, we said, how about if we just work with the dad then? You know, the billionaire himself?

But now the father didn’t want to have anything to do with it since it reminded him of the rift with his son. And our first golden opportunity evaporated in front of our eyes all because of a stupid little spat.

Jaime hadn’t been idle during our long wait and had lined up several other potentials. He would call them up and make the pitch and then I would fire off all the emails with our prospectus. We were developing a great teamwork approach to finding suitable investors and pitching them, but our reception was anything but warm.

Most of them had no idea how Hollywood worked. New England’s rich make their money in technology, real estate, healthcare and one or two other isolated industries far removed from the glitz of Los Angeles.

But we wanted someone local backing the project. This was a New England production, we said, and it should really have someone behind it from the area.

So, as we pitched, we had to educate. We explained and became conversant on the myriad ways Hollywood makes its money (actually, wink-wink, Hollywood doesn’t make any money at all. Nope, not a dime. Never. Everything they launch goes into the red and no one ever gets paid. Seriously. Here, have a bridge, too.)

And then we found someone else who wanted to meet with us. She was local. She was wealthy. And she wanted to “do something different.”

Well, we were different. And we finally had a chance to pitch her in person.

January 08, 2009

I know people who will drive 100 miles to catch a smoke and I know people who will drive 100 miles the other way to avoid even a whiff. I belong to the first group but desperately try to fit in with the second; the direct opposite play I made in high school. You see, back then, the Muscogee County School Board in Georgia insisted I smoke and even hired a schoolyard guard to ensure I conformed to their smokers-only policy. Problem was, I didn’t want to smoke and I didn’t think it was “cool” but, being a “good girl,” I promptly took up the habit.

It was the early 1970s, an era of patched blue jeans, halter tops, hippie headbands, oversized army jackets, and approved student smoking areas in high schools. I spent my high school years in several schools since my father was in the army and we moved a lot. They all had smoking areas for students, usually close by the parking lot with several trash barrels sprinkled about, partly for warming fires on cold days, partly as a depository for the butts.

Students were allowed to adjourn to the smoking area before and after school and during the lunch break. Parental consent wasn't required and there wasn’t an age limit; some of the student smokers were as young as 14. Ironically, teachers, coaches and hired “schoolyard guards” trolled these places supervising our smoking while keeping an eye peeled for drug use.

It was common for students to skip lunch altogether in order to congregate with buddies. Some brought bagged lunches and swapped goodies or shared with the hungry-but-bagless. This was particularly the case at the old Spencer High School in Columbus that snuggled up to the slaughter house. If the cafeteria food didn’t turn your stomach, the incessant fumes of death-next-door certainly would.

But it was neighboring Kendrick High School, also in Columbus, that drove the school smoking policy home and forever embedded the addiction in my being. The policy was that you either sat quietly in the lunch room (before school or during lunch) or you could go to the smoking area and visit freely with your peers. The catch: You couldn’t go to the smoking area unless you were a smoker and they checked to see that you had a cigarette in your hand the whole time you stood out there. If you put the cigarette out, you had to go back to the lunchroom and sit alone. The concept of chain-smoking caught on quicker than any wildfire.

I have smoked since. Yes, I know it’s bad for me. Yes, I know I need to quit. And I’ve tried to quit more times than I can count. I’ll most certainly try again. And again. And again. Maybe one day I’ll make it.

I’ve heard it said in several circles that Obama is trying to quit too but that he’s still sneaking a smoke now and then. I know how he feels. I try to sneak and smoke too because I’m tired of the harsh judgmental stares and the hurtful comments. I am not more because I smoke, but I’m not less either. So that’s how it is that me and Obama are “smokin’ in the boys’ room,” separately of course, like we’re naughty kids again.

Except, at least in my case, I wasn’t a naughty kid, I was a good kid that conformed to what I was taught in school.

Is anyone looking to see what is being taught in school today? Look past curriculums and beyond policies and pat platitudes. Go find the smoke and follow it to the fire that’s branding a lifelong habit, behavior or belief on the souls of kids. You may just be horrified to find the scars that are forming there.

(Today's guest blogger is Jon F. Merz, novelist (author of the Lawson Vampire novels), screenwriter, and now TV producer for the new TV showThe Fixer )

If I were pitching my current project as a movie in Hollywood, here’s what the logline would sound like: “Two guys with no real experience in the television business decide to ask private investors to front them millions so they can produce 13 episodes of a new supernatural TV series that they will then sell broadcast rights to domestically and internationally, thereby hopefully making hundreds of millions of dollars and turning the entire Hollywood business model on its head.”

Sounds absolutely ludicrous, right?

But that is, in fact, what my business partner Jaime and I are doing. Let me back up for a moment and give you a few more details.

I’m a writer. I’ve had over a dozen novels published, co-authored two non-fiction books, had scores of short stories appear in print alongside some heavy hitters like Stephen King, and have written ad copy for everyone from Polaroid to Red Lobster Restaurants. I’ve scripted comics, screenplays, and turned four 3-minute webisodes into a novel. I don’t just write in one medium, preferring instead to try my hand at anything that helps me bump my game up to the next level.

Over the years, I’ve flirted a lot with Hollywood. There’s been some serious sexual tension, culminating a few times with deals that looked reasonably good on paper. But I’ve never jumped into the sack and here’s why: Hollywood doesn’t pay writers enough.

If you’re interested in how Hollywood makes its money, there is no finer book to read than THE BIG PICTURE: Money & Power in Hollywood by Edward James Epstein. I read that book several years ago and it opened my eyes.

Novelists especially tend to have a very fairytale image of Hollywood. They imagine that if they write a book, that Hollywood will come calling with an option (this is a small price – almost a rental fee, really – giving the producer or exec the ability to shop the project around and possibly secure financing, cast, crew, etc. within a certain time frame (usually 6-18 months)) or an outright rights purchase. If the movie then gets made, the studio will cut the writer a handsome check and the novelist gets the thrill of seeing their book turned into a movie.

When I started cutting my teeth in publishing, I imagined it would be this same amazing love story. What I didn’t count on was the interminable wait, the endless teases, and the fact that Hollywood doesn’t want novelists writing anything or sticking their noses anywhere into the process.

Some writers can live with that. They take the money and run, knowing that the end result may well be such an extreme departure from their original novel that it bears resemblance in name only – if they’re lucky.

But when studios wanted my work, I knew what they could reasonably expect to make off of my creations. And I wanted more than they were offering. Of course they balked and all the whispered promises evaporated.

Last year, exhausted at the number of television shows that were coming out that were, to be overly kind, crap, my friend Jaime and I sat down and discussed the idea of trying to do something ourselves.

When we hashed out the concept of using my un-vampire vampire series of novels as our first project, the first person I bounced the idea off of was a good friend of mine who works in the film/TV industry. He’s well-known, so I won’t mention his name here, but he pretty much knows everyone worth knowing in Los Angeles and New York City. I called him and told him what we were planning. Then I asked him if we were crazy.

What he told me was this: “If you can make this work, then the sky is the limit. You will open doors that have never been open to you before and you will change the way Hollywood works in TV.” Then he offered to come on and be part of our executive board.

That was good enough for us. We started New Ronin Productions and chose THE FIXER as our first project. Ronin, in feudal Japan, were masterless samurai – called “wave men” because they owed allegiance to no lord. The name felt appropriate and our mission seemed sound, albeit tough as hell.

We would find private investors willing to back us in the production of thirteen episodes for the first season. (Networks usually greenlight, or approve, a pilot and then order up to twelve additional episodes for a first season run). We would put a team together to shoot, edit, and package the series, as well as sell it domestically and internationally. I would write all the episodes, thereby guaranteeing that the sanctity of my novels stayed intact and that I had complete control over the story lines and characters. The novels take place in New England; the cast and crew would be from New England; and we hoped that our investors would also be from the region. THE FIXER would be born and raised in our backyard. We thought that was pretty cool.

We enlisted two experienced directors who had worked in both television and independent films for years (therefore they knew how to work on a tight budget). Our sales force was composed of industry vets who had shepherded major films to hundreds of millions of dollars worth of sales. Experienced vets and up-and-comers made up our crew. And our art & marketing department worked hard to develop a consistent look for our flagship project. You can see the results thus far at our official website.

But we needed money to pull this off. There was no business precedent whose plan we could use to attract investors, so we put it together after weeks of research into Hollywood budgets, sales forecasts, and more. Trying to divulge what Hollywood spends and what it makes is harder than cracking into the National Security Agency, but at long last, we felt we had a workable business prospectus.

Our offer was generous; we knew it had to be. We offered a 50% return on investment within 24 months to those who chose to back us. The task now was to try to convince wealthy Bostonians and New Englanders that a TV series entirely produced in their backyard was a viable and worthwhile investment.

But first, we had to find them. And then we had to get in the front door…

January 04, 2009

I ran into an old colleague at a holiday party recently. I hadn’t really seen him for a while. Having just successfully lost about 1/3 of my body weight, I’m always a little taken aback by how different I look to people. He grabbed my hand tenderly, looked me in the eye with a straight face and said … Somewhere in your attic, there’s a portrait of you that is simply hideous because you are simply gorgeous.

Linda Y. Cureton

My first thought went to one of my favorite childhood TV show

Dark Shadows where Quentin Collins had one of those portraits in his attic. But, then I quickly thought of something not so campy and that was of Oscar Wilde and his Picture of Dorian Gray.

And finally, I couldn’t really reconcile that how I “look” to myself hasn’t really changed at all. I’m still the same chubby girl inside.

This leads me to one of my current science experiments as CIO of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. I wanted to learn, kinesthetically, about the efficacy and effectiveness of Web 2.0 tools. I started by authoring the Goddard CIO Blog .

My intent was to use it as: a leadership tool, a communication media, and a way to build trust with the people I lead by allowing them to get to know “me” better.

But, who is me? Am I the chubby portrait in that attic? Or am I this man’s perception of a gorgeous woman in red, after obviously too much wine? Or neither? Am I CIO, senior executive, wife, sister, aunt, friend, daughter, leader, teacher, role model? All of the above? Or a portrait of neither?

I thought of a rather unpleasant incident at my old Church where we had an “anonymous” forum for asking questions and getting answers. The mean-spirited attacks from a minority of my Church brothers and sisters shook me. I realized that it was the “mask” of anonymity that brought out the “true nature” of a few folks who appeared otherwise. Consider this Oscar Wilde observation:

"Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. Give him a mask, and he will tell you the truth."

I thought of some things that a virtual friend of mine shared from his experiences in Second Life. There, he told me, people feel free to do things that they can’t or shouldn’t do in Real Life. Now, I realize that I am such a rookie in Second Life, that I have barely mastered walking, so maybe I don‘t really get it. Yet, he shared with me a touching story of some of his friends who displayed what, on the surface, looked like a bizarre behavior of jumping, but in “reality” it was something they could NOT do in real life. But, in their reality, “They Walked” .

Sometimes, in this “reality”, things go wrong. There could be times that we don’t like what we’ve become or can’t reconcile the real and the virtual. An interesting post is reprinted here where some are pushed to digital suicide .

George Benson must have understood, when he sang the painful lyrics to “This Masquerade”:

game we play Looking for words to say Searchingbut not finding understanding anywhere We're lost in a masquerade

I DECIDED that my Virtual Identity would be my REAL Identity. But, who am I really? The gorgeous woman in red? Or the chubby portrait of a girl in the attic? A profound side effect of Web 2.0 that I have discovered is that I am both AND neither. And along with that, is my learning of the true ATOMIC effect of Web 2.0 -- and how it is helping me make that discovery.